tmujir955:Er... you meant dual-wielding lightsabers for that last one, right?

Also, I think you're right. If any game can topple WOW, or at least steal a chunk of its fans, it will be TOR. I mean, have you seen that trailer!? It's fucking epic.

Did you see the trailer for X-Men:Last stand? It was also fucking epic. Too bad the movie sucked.

Honestly, dont trust trailers. Thats how they suck you in. Play the trail first, else you could be in for some disappointment.

I was just joking. See, had I been conversing normally to you, you would have understood that. I guess emotion can't be carried over the Internet.

To clarify, I'm not saying the trailer isn't fucking epic(Cause everyone knows it is) but I am saying that trailers don't make the game.

If trailers made the game, then Dragon Age Origins would be even more popular with the graphics that were used in the trailer being in the game. As it is though, the trailer still set the theme which the game stuck to. I wouldn't be surprised if TOR opens with Coruscant already in flames, since we pretty much start with the war in full swing. A really made trailer sticks to the theme that the story is all about. A crappy trailer makes up its own shit and people are lost when they see the movie with expectations given from the trailer. So if this is a good trailer(it gets my excitement up), then we have a lot to look forward to come release day.On another note, I liked the part where the main jedi the sith was facing didn't even flinch when the shuttle came crashing in. That's moxy, and what a true jedi is made of. I'm thinking Mace Windu is from the same gene pool as that guy.

Hey Bioware, long time no see! you'v been busy I see, making your fancy new MMO's, getting into the big leagues...now, I don't wanna stop you from pursuing your dreams of De-throning one of the most successful (at least money wise) games of all time, but, I wanna take you back to a simpler time. a time when you didn't need 11 million other players just to have a fun experience. That time, was KOTOR. (not KOTOR 2, will get to that travesty later.) You guys had one thing going for you. give people the opportunity to make the most bad ass Sith/Jedi they could Think of. and it was amazing. I mean literally, it was one of the most enjoyable things I ever did with my Xbox. You did it so well you thought to yourself "hey, lets to it again! but make it darker and grittier!" and that wasn't a bad road to take. What WAS a bad road to take was to hire a publisher who couldn't be patient and demand you put the game on market before it was ready, forcing you to take out an ENTIRE PLANET (a planet that was made up of entirely Dead robots, BY THE WAY. That would have been so awesome) as well as forcing the ending to make about as much sense as a Monkey Fornicating the barrel he just jumped out of!

So in conclusion guys, good luck with it, and you always have my support as a loyal fan. Just remember that you don't NEED to make an to make a good game. you make good games by having believable and attractive characters, An interesting and well-thought your plot, and, last but not least, a bad-ass Villain for you to rally against. Oh and ah, if your ever not busy, you mind going back to Jade Empire and considering expanding on it? That game was sweet.

Like with Aion, Warhammer Online, Guild Wars, Darkfall, etc: I won't believe it until I fucking see it.

Despite the bickering that does on in and around WoW, you still can't deny the fact that it's the powerhouse of the MMORPG genre. They are the tobacco industry of gaming, next to FPS, sports titles and rhythm games. It would be interesting to see someone get at least half of WoW's numbers, fanbase and familiarity.

If I get this game, which will all depend upon the format of payment. If it is like WoW or AoC and we can buy cards rather than doing straight up credit card, I probably will. If I get this game, Bounty Hunter, not cause I wanna be all like "I'm Boba Fet, Bitches" but because thats the style in which I play usually, Guild Wars Dervishes not withstanding.

I'm not so sure it could topple WoW. WoW is massive and has the pay check to support it's self and more. If anything could kill WoW it's WoW it's self. I may be taking a break from WoW because I hate it but I can tell you Im going back. Most WoW players go back after even years away. I though I was going to quit about 6 months ago and I didn't. Hell I was going to sell off all my characters too. The fact still remand was I was hooked on WoW. I just need some time away. And I put so my time into my rogue to have a noob not know how to use it and destroy it.As for TOR, I'll just wait and see what happens when it's out. Allot of people were saying Aion would be a WoW killer and well it hasn't touched WoW. As a rule I don't look at trailers anyway. crappy games can have amazing trailers. In short, I'll wait and see how good it really is after it's been out awhile. I'll just be optimistically skeptical.

ww2jacob:I don't think TOR can bring down WoW, but it might be one factor among many that begins the decline of WoW. Ultimately a lot's going to depend on how much lasting value TOR ends up having.

I can't decide between the Smuggler or the Imperial Agent, myself.

I am posting way too much in this thread, but does anyone else notice that most of the people saying "Idk, I don't think it'll have much of an impact" are sure to also cite what kind of lightsaber they'll be using? ;)

;)

I don't think it's that people don't think TOR will be a success, which I, personally, certainly hope it will be. It's just that WoW has become such a juggernaut that I don't think that it, even if Bioware does pretty much everything right, can be stopped cold just like that. However you feel about the game, you have to admit WoW has transcended the world of gaming and has made itself known to pop culture, and thus no MMO nowadays will be a true "WoW-killer" -- maybe not even Blizzard's new MMO. When WoW dies, it will be after a long decline and many, many successively improved MMOs filled with new ideas and developments. That, of course, doesn't mean TOR can't be a big success, even taking away chunks of subs from WoW.

I'm neitral to both the Warcraft universe and the Starwars universe and I gotta say TOR looks like a much more massive and epic scope then WoW every dreamed when it was first conceieved. WoW will die, if not by this then by time from hardcore fan bases shunning newbs, activision slow regression from updating servers and patching bugs, and simply by outdated graphics and clunkly gameplay.

Kelethor:Hey Bioware, long time no see! you'v been busy I see, making your fancy new MMO's, getting into the big leagues...now, I don't wanna stop you from pursuing your dreams of De-throning one of the most successful (at least money wise) games of all time, but, I wanna take you back to a simpler time. a time when you didn't need 11 million other players just to have a fun experience. That time, was KOTOR. (not KOTOR 2, will get to that travesty later.) You guys had one thing going for you. give people the opportunity to make the most bad ass Sith/Jedi they could Think of. and it was amazing. I mean literally, it was one of the most enjoyable things I ever did with my Xbox. You did it so well you thought to yourself "hey, lets to it again! but make it darker and grittier!" and that wasn't a bad road to take. What WAS a bad road to take was to hire a publisher who couldn't be patient and demand you put the game on market before it was ready, forcing you to take out an ENTIRE PLANET (a planet that was made up of entirely Dead robots, BY THE WAY. That would have been so awesome) as well as forcing the ending to make about as much sense as a Monkey Fornicating the barrel he just jumped out of!

So in conclusion guys, good luck with it, and you always have my support as a loyal fan. Just remember that you don't NEED to make an to make a good game. you make good games by having believable and attractive characters, An interesting and well-thought your plot, and, last but not least, a bad-ass Villain for you to rally against. Oh and ah, if your ever not busy, you mind going back to Jade Empire and considering expanding on it? That game was sweet.

BioWare did not make KotOR 2. That was Obsidian. I'm still surprised by how many people don't know that.

Haha! #5 made me laugh!I play WoW, and have consistently liked Blizzards products, and Star Wars is pretty much what I grew up on, at least the original trilogy.

However, I saw the gameplay of The Old Republic that was released oh so long ago, and I remember being underwhelmed by several things. The BIG one being the cover system which has a blocky green man thingy pointing his blocky green gun over a rock or wall, and I remember thinking that it looked pretty funky. Then the teamplay gameplay, it reminded me of so many encounters in WoW, where a gate lowers, bad guys come out, you slashy slashy them, and wait for the next gate, and at the end, you fight a boss mob. This and other things, but I'll stop here.

In short, it resembled WoW too much for me to want to play both, and I hope Old Republic does well, it looks like fun, but not significantly different from WoW in gameplay.

Or maybe I'm just cynical from how horrible Aion was after less than a month. :<

kementari:I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but maybe it's not an MMO you want. Your apparent aversion to loot and PvP suggests maybe you should just stay with the single-player genre.

Personally, I don't find anything wrong with this scenario, from either a development or in-world perspective. You think Sith didn't collect the lightsabers of the Jedi they'd killed as trophies? You think Jedi didn't take the Sith lightsabers back to the Temple for study? How else do you think the holocrons got all that information?

Frankly, "punked" is precisely the word I imagine most Sith players will use to describe what they just did to Jedi players. And aside from its obvious real-world slang, it's a sentiment that fits the Bane lineage of Sith perfectly.

Playing with other players can be very rewarding. I'll grant that I tend to prefer PvE to PvP, but I have enjoyed PvP as well... When there wasn't one type of player who was declaring victory over the people playing tic-tac-toe by launching their shooter marble across the cross-hatching, so to speak. When any class is described primarily in terms of its combat advantages against other classes- without any mention of how other classes might gain an advantage over that class in turn- I get serious qualms, and I think reasonably so. There's an obvious contradiction when you describe a framework that rewards teamwork and cooperation and strategic thinking and then say, "And then there's so-and-so, who just kills the other side, heh heh heh." It may be that the Imperial Agent is PvP-strong and PvE-poor, as some have suggested of CoH's Stalker class- but frankly, that setup sucks in City of Heroes, and I've seen no reason to think it would work better anywhere else.

And for the record, there's no reason to suggest that the genre of MMORPGs belongs exclusively to the PvP crowd.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with "loot" and I recognize its attraction to many players, the loot system that has been shown in KOTOR and TSL is possibly the weakest overarcing element in both games. In some ways, the very idea of "loot" borders on being antithetical to Star Wars as a whole. There are occasional suggestions of a system of trade and a need for money in the movies- usually as a means of getting off of a planet- but aside from light sabers themselves, the number of objects that a person could conceivably carry around with them that are ascribed worth and meaning in the Star Wars movies could be counted on one hand. Blasters, thermal detonators, the plans for the Death Star... Maybe whichever piece C-3PO has had blown off most recently- And that's about it, really. Acquisition of wealth for wealth's sake seems to be relegated to giant slugs like the Hutts. Both the Jedi and the Sith largely seem to think it beneath them; people, cities, and planets are what matter. Frankly, even lightsaber-collecting seems to have been something only General Grievous was into, fat lot of good it did him.

To be clear, again, there's nothing inherently wrong with "loot" as part of a MMO. But the presenters of TOR really ought to do better than the twerp who made that media presentation: either show how they've made "loot" that makes sense within the context of the Star Wars universe, or show how they've made a loot system that's better than the one in KOTOR, which, as I've said, sucks.

What players will say on the chat channel, as always, the moderators have only the faintest vestige of control over. If TOR is going to stand shoulder to shoulder with WoW, however, the people who present it should know better than to use language that conveys the message that it's just like every other also-ran.

I think it looks awesome, but I don't have a powerful PC, and I'm not an MMO man.Still, looks awesome, and I hope it beats doen WoW, it's been going unchallenged for too long, plus it's frickin' Bioware!!!

ww2jacob:I don't think TOR can bring down WoW, but it might be one factor among many that begins the decline of WoW. Ultimately a lot's going to depend on how much lasting value TOR ends up having.

I can't decide between the Smuggler or the Imperial Agent, myself.

I am posting way too much in this thread, but does anyone else notice that most of the people saying "Idk, I don't think it'll have much of an impact" are sure to also cite what kind of lightsaber they'll be using? ;)

;)

I don't think it's that people don't think TOR will be a success, which I, personally, certainly hope it will be. It's just that WoW has become such a juggernaut that I don't think that it, even if Bioware does pretty much everything right, can be stopped cold just like that. However you feel about the game, you have to admit WoW has transcended the world of gaming and has made itself known to pop culture, and thus no MMO nowadays will be a true "WoW-killer" -- maybe not even Blizzard's new MMO. When WoW dies, it will be after a long decline and many, many successively improved MMOs filled with new ideas and developments. That, of course, doesn't mean TOR can't be a big success, even taking away chunks of subs from WoW.

Oh, I totally agree. My posts on this subject reflect that I'm of the opinion that "being a WoW-killer" is neither a feasible enterprise nor something games should aim for. The number of people who have quit WoW would be far more than enough to make any game profitable, and the concept of someone who plays more than one MMO is not as unusual as many would have you believe.

Long story short, as someone said above, there's room for two mega-MMOs on the internet. TOR doesn't have to worry about dethroning WoW, it just has to worry about being a good enough game to keep enough players to be fiscally successful.

pimppeter2:I fear that it will end up like Warhammer Online. Too many Siths running around.

They'll just be Bantha Fodder for my Devastator MarineTrooper and his Heavy Bolterwhatever is big and shooty in Star Wars. (Bring on da dakka!)

I was just thinking how reason #2 didn't make much sense to me since Mythic had EA's money in Warhammer Online as well, until you mentioned Star Wars' brand power.

I think the game has a good shot at doing well, but from what they've released so far it doesn't actually look much like a MMO at all. Given the low number of classes, it makes me wonder whether the party system and adventures will be built for the traditional six-man or scaled-down somewhat. The enemies in the playthrough trailer looked like barely enough for two people to have fun with.

Yes, I am aware that the area could be designed for only two players or they could scale the mission based on the number of players in the party but the lack of "Massively Multiplayer" in what they've shown in the game has me wondering exactly how this game is going to play.

When any class is described primarily in terms of its combat advantages against other classes- without any mention of how other classes might gain an advantage over that class in turn- I get serious qualms, and I think reasonably so. There's an obvious contradiction when you describe a framework that rewards teamwork and cooperation and strategic thinking and then say, "And then there's so-and-so, who just kills the other side, heh heh heh." It may be that the Imperial Agent is PvP-strong and PvE-poor, as some have suggested of CoH's Stalker class- but frankly, that setup sucks in City of Heroes, and I've seen no reason to think it would work better anywhere else.

Granted, I haven't played CoH, but I hardly think that you're giving what the developer said a fair chance. He was doing a brief exposition on the Agent, and explaining the one element that set it apart from other classes. I'd wait until all the data is in before jumping down Bioware's throats about this class. What you quoted about the Agent sounds to me like "Rogues can stealth up to a target and stun them before they have a chance to react" - a concept that, in WoW, sounds overpowered from a soundbyte, but is actually not gamebreaking.

They'd have to be extremely foolish to let something so obviously unbalanced go into the game, and whatever gripes you (or I, as I certainly have a lot of them) have with Bioware, being foolish is not really one of them. (Nor is a tendency toward egregious class imbalance, and as I recall, CoH was Cryptic and NCsoft, not Bioware.)

Callate:While there's nothing inherently wrong with "loot" and I recognize its attraction to many players, the loot system that has been shown in KOTOR and TSL is possibly the weakest overarcing element in both games.

But this is not KoTOR the single-player game, this is SW:TOR, an MMO. The loot systems will probably be very different, in keeping with how MMOs need to offer "carrots" to players.

Callate:In some ways, the very idea of "loot" borders on being antithetical to Star Wars as a whole. There are occasional suggestions of a system of trade and a need for money in the movies- usually as a means of getting off of a planet- but aside from light sabers themselves, the number of objects that a person could conceivably carry around with them that are ascribed worth and meaning in the Star Wars movies could be counted on one hand. Blasters, thermal detonators, the plans for the Death Star... Maybe whichever piece C-3PO has had blown off most recently- And that's about it, really.

Now, I'm a fanatical Star Wars loretard, but having played a few video games in my time, preserving the lootless, relatively moneyless system you allege is central to Star Wars (rather than just an element of the films being, you know, films) would be a deathknell for an MMO. Sometimes lore and flavor have to bend in favor of adhering to industry standards, and one of those standards is that MMOs tend to be reward-based and have virtual economies. This is one of those times. I think you're being a little bit picky.

Callate:Acquisition of wealth for wealth's sake seems to be relegated to giant slugs like the Hutts. Both the Jedi and the Sith largely seem to think it beneath them; people, cities, and planets are what matter. Frankly, even lightsaber-collecting seems to have been something only General Grievous was into, fat lot of good it did him.

You don't sound like an EU fan, so this is probably forgivable, but I did a giant @_@ at this section. There are instances of Force users, especially Sith, picking up trophies of their battles all over the place. Palpatine was one of the worst, being several times described as basically a packrat, depositing giant hidden hoards of his confiscated goodies all over the galaxy like some kind of chipmunk dragon. The Sith embraced greed, and believed that if you were powerful enough to take something by force, you deserved to have it and had every right to do so. True, the Jedi at the height of the Republic tended toward a Spartan lifestyle, but that didn't mean they didn't carry around anything they might need. Then you have the bounty hunters and the smugglers, both explicitly for-profit occupations.

Callate:What players will say on the chat channel, as always, the moderators have only the faintest vestige of control over. If TOR is going to stand shoulder to shoulder with WoW, however, the people who present it should know better than to use language that conveys the message that it's just like every other also-ran.

First: I think you may have misunderstood the intent of what I said about how those phrases conceptually, if not linguistically, fit right into the greedy, vengeful, sadistic, utterly selfish mold of the post-Bane breed of Sith.

Second: Have you ever heard a WoW developer talk? I don't expect Bioware's devs to be loretards (except the ones who do the writing, and they hopefully aren't the ones who do the class balancing or the gameplay design), and neither should you. Developers are gamers at heart, and I'd prefer they talk about phat lewts and pwning noobs - at least they're speaking my language.

does anybody remember star wars galaxies? i do! age of conans going to take down wow then warhammer is going to take down wow now this is going to take down wow. maybe we could invent a new sales pitch that doesnt involve wow?

You make very good points mr. Funk, I am going to put all my faith in bioware into this game, as soon as it is out I shall buy it, I shall not wait for reviews, I shall not listen to the haters and the naysayers, and even if its broken beyond redemption I shall love it (it will be perfect though)

and mr. Funk, if you turn to the dark side, my Jedi will save you! HE SHALL SAVE EVERYONE!!!

This might already have been mentioned, but I don't have time to read through everything right now:

Two things the game will need if it is to have any chance of threatening WoW:

1: A functional social system. This can be done better than WoW, conceivably, considering how little the friend system in WoW has changed since release.

2: Things to do when you don't feel like killing stuff. WoW has had years to develop this, so trying to match it right out the gate is practically impossible. But using that as an excuse to not add anything is just laziness. Make it possible to break out a fishing rod, or to go on exploration trips, or play with a pet, or something. Some sort of mini-game, some mindless behavior that one can play around with while just enjoying the world around you and/or chatting to friends/guild mates.

tmujir955:Er... you meant dual-wielding lightsabers for that last one, right?

Also, I think you're right. If any game can topple WOW, or at least steal a chunk of its fans, it will be TOR. I mean, have you seen that trailer!? It's fucking epic.

Just sayin'...

I think The Old Republic have shot itself in the foot by trying too hard to not be World of Warcraft. Anything that is even similar will be picked up by players who want to play it because it isn't World of Warcraft and get torn apart. In the end, the players they're trying to attract will be it's downfall.

Didn't we have articles like this about WAR for being better, AoC for being mature, Aion for being unique, Champions for being from an existing MMO company and RoM for being free? Look at how all of those turned out.

John Funk:John Funk still can't make up his mind about being a Jedi Knight or a Sith Inquisitor.

Jedi Knight, baby. You know all the 13-year-olds are going to approach this game with LOL IM A BADASS SITH LIEK DARTH MAUL.

Republic is gonna be where it's at.

Have you played World of Warcraft? All of the 13 year olds are all "LOL IM A BADASS HERO LIEK ARTHAS". I'm fairly sure it will be this way in The Old Republic too, because they all want to be Obi-Wan or Yoda.

Join the dark side!

Actually, all the kids go Alliance because they're the pretty races. The four original races for the Horde are physically unappealing to your average player. That's the whole reason that the Blood Elves were added to the Horde's roster, to give them a "pretty" race that would appeal to more people.

It's very likely that with TOR, the dark side will have more of the "kiddy" players since they all want to be the bad-asses with their Force Lightning.

This won't dent WoW it's delussional to think so many ambitious projects have had those exact same words stapled to them "wow killer" Warhammer, huge brand name fanatical fanbase failed miserably, Age of Conan tried to innovate failed horribly bugs out the whazoo and clunky as hell gameplay, Aion pretty but just another well disguised Korean grindfest. We have seen very little of the gameplay for ToR and is this thing even going to be beta tested? It's an ambitious project for Bioware but they don't have the money or the fanbase Blizzard has nor the experiance, could it be good sure but don't be suprised when Blizzards still dominating the MMO market.

Nmil-ek:This won't dent WoW it's delussional to think so many ambitious projects have had those exact same words stapled to them "wow killer" Warhammer, huge brand name fanatical fanbase failed miserably, Age of Conan tried to innovate failed horribly bugs out the whazoo and clunky as hell gameplay, Aion pretty but just another well disguised Korean grindfest. We have seen very little of the gameplay for ToR and is this thing even going to be beta tested? It's an ambitious project for Bioware but they don't have the money or the fanbase Blizzard has nor the experiance, could it be good sure but don't be suprised when Blizzards still dominating the MMO market.

Uh... What? Do you know anything about Bioware AT ALL? It might not ruin WoW, but it will most CERTAINLY dent it.